Back in the mid-late '90s I worked at Variety, the entertainment industry trade paper in LA. It became generally known in the newsroom that I was a big Trekker, and various reporters gradually started funneling me Trek-related materials they received from Paramount.

A part of this trove that I still have is several review VHS tapes. These are mostly DS9 and Voyager episodes, which Paramount sent to Variety to get reviewed in the paper. What's interesting about these tapes is that at the point in the production cycle where they were dubbed off, the sound had not yet been added. There's no music, no sound FX, no computer voices...you hear actors walking around on plywood sets, and disengaged off-camera voices reading the dialogue that in the completed episode are spoken by computers, aliens or voice-overs.

After I dub myself some DVD copies, I am thinking these VHS tapes might fetch a good price on eBay. But it also occurs to me that some might take issue with putting unique artifacts like this on the market.